A Boy Goes into the World

My brother rode off on his bike
into the summer afternoon, but
mother called me back
from the end of the sandy drive:
"It's different for girls."

He'd be gone for hours, come back
with things: a cocoon, gray-brown
and papery around a stick;
a puff ball, ripe, wrinkled,
and exuding spores; owl pellets --
bits of undigested bone and fur;
and pieces of moss that might
have made toupees for preposterous
green men, but went instead
into a wide-necked jar for a terrarium.

He mounted his plunder on poster
board, gluing and naming
each piece. He has long since
forgotten those days and things, but
I at last can claim them as my own.

Literary Notes:

It's the birthday of poet Thomas
Hood, born in London (1799). His father was a successful author and
bookseller, but Hood originally thought to make a life as an engraver. Influenced
by his uncle, he worked at engraving until his joined the staff of London
Magazine as a sub-editor at the age of 22. In 1826, he published Whims
and Oddities, a collection of comic poems that was very well received. He
became well known for his black humor. Though his comic writing earned him more
praise during his lifetime, his most enduring poems have been those that deal
with the issues of social injustice and gender inequality, such as The Last
Man, The Bridge of Sighs, and The Lay of the Laborer.

It's the birthday of writer and reporter Margaret
Fuller, born in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts (1810). She was the eldest
of 9 children. Her father put her through a rigorous course of study, and she
was able to read Latin fluently by the age of 6 and had moved on to the work
of Shakespeare and Cervantes by the age of 12. In 1836, she taught at a school
in Providence, Rhode Island until moving to Boston 3 years later. There she
became immersed in the American transcendentalist movement, which was spearheaded
by such prominent authors as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom
she had met several years earlier. In 1840, the transcendentalist journal The
Dial was launched, with Fuller and Emerson as its first co-editors.

It's the birthday of children's author Margaret
Wise Brown, born in Brooklyn, New York (1910). She's known for writing
such classics of children's literature as Goodnight Moon (1947), The
Runaway Bunny (1942), and The Little Island, which won the Caldecott
Medal in 1947. As a child, she was described as the "family storyteller,
trickster, and daydreamer." After publishing her first book in 1937, she
began writing children's books prolifically. At the height of her career, Margaret
was writing for six different publishers under five pen names. Brown loved animals
as a child, and used them as the main characters in many of her books. She said,
"I had thirty-six rabbits, two squirrels-one bit me and dropped dead-a
collie dog, two Peruvian guinea pigs, a Belgian hare, and seven fish and a wild
robin who came back every spring." Margaret had a very strong sense of
the types of stories that young children wanted to read. During a time when
most children's books were fables or fairy tales, Margaret wrote about everyday
life and encounters. She authored over one hundred books before her untimely
death at the age of 42.

On this day in 1911, the New York Pubic Library was dedicated
in a ceremony presided over by President William Howard Taft. It took 14
years to complete at a cost of $9 million. At the end of the 19th century, New
York was one of the largest cities in the world, and yet it still had no public
library large enough to serve its citizens. In 1886, Gov. Samuel Tilden left
$2.4 million to "establish and maintain a free library and reading room
in the city of New York." The two leading city libraries at that time agreed
to merge their assets with Tilden's capital, and the dedication of the library
occurred exactly sixteen years later to the day. When the library first opened
its doors on May 24th, there were one million volumes on its shelves, and 40,000
curious visitors. Today, it is easily the largest public library in the United
States, with over 2 million card-carrying members.

It's the birthday of poet Jane
Kenyon, born in Ann Arbor, Michigan (1947). She received her degree
in English from the University of Michigan and married poet Donald Hall who
was her professor. They moved to Eagle Pond Farm in New Hampshire, his family
home of several generations. There she wrote about nature, the changing of the
seasons, and quiet country life. She published only four books of poetry before
she died from leukemia at the age of 47, one month before her birthday. She
was the state poet of New Hampshire at the time.

It's the birthday of the Father of Taxonomy, Carl
Linnaeus, born in Stenbrohult, Sweden (1707). His father was a Lutheran
pastor and an avid gardener and young Linnaeus was interested in plants from
a young age. In 1735 he published the first edition of his classification of
living things, Systema Naturae, for which he became famous. What survives
of the Linnean system today is its method of hierarchical classification and
custom of binomial nomenclature. He attached great significance to the then
recent discovery of the sexual reproduction of plants. He wrote, "The flowers'
leaves. . . serve as bridal beds which the Creator has so gloriously arranged,
adorned with such noble bed curtains, and perfumed with so many soft scents
that the bridegroom with his bride might there celebrate their nuptials with
so much the greater solemnity. . ." This was controversial, and he attracted
some critics. He got his revenge though, by naming insignificant weeds after
them.

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Although he has edited several anthologies of his favorite poems, O, What a Luxury: Verses Lyrical, Vulgar, Pathetic & Profound forges a new path for Garrison Keillor, as a poet of light verse.
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